Some More Confused Poker Psychology, Part Five

Idea No. 36: Become friends with an expert player. Then when you’re about to make a poor decision, imagine what this person would do and do that instead.

This is an idea that’s obviously targeted for a marginal player. But the problem here is that the marginal players, who make lots of bad decisions, are rarely aware that the decisions they make are bad. That’s because poker is mainly a game of knowledge and not self-control.

This should be easy to see. For if poker was a game of just self-control, then virtually anyone could be a top player. Of course, if this was also the case, there probably wouldn’t be any winners since everyone would play about the same.

Idea No. 37: Older players make better decisions because their prefrontal cortex is better developed. But this can also cause them to play somewhat nitty.

If a poker player is too nitty, it means they don’t understand what maximizing expectation often entails. That is the price for increasing your win rate is to often also increase the short term luck factor. But this is something that expert players gladly pay because they now expect to win more in the long run. So when you identify someone as playing too tight and too conservatively, it almost always means that their understanding of all things poker, especially strategy, can use some improvement.

Idea No. 38: Playing poorly will not win back the money that has recently been lost.

This statement can only be true if the short term luck factor in poker is small which is not the case. In fact, the most likely way to win back a substantial loss in a small amount of time is to play poorly, usually by playing too many hands and playing them very aggressively. However, the problem with doing this is that your expectation will now decrease (and usually be negative). Thus, if this is done often, even though you may occasionally win all the money back, it should hurt your long term results. In addition, this idea shows confusion between actual results and expectation.

Idea No. 39: Before taking any action at the poker table, it’s important to ask how this situation is likely to play out.

This is more of the same (as Idea No. 38). In many poker situations, the short term luck factor is too large to answer this question with much certainty. That’s why you need to think in terms of expectation and not short term results.

As an example, suppose in no-limit hold ’em you have a flush draw with one card to come, your opponent has bet, the pot is offering you odds of less than 4-to-1, but your opponent has a large stack. In this spot, you may have a reasonable idea of what your expectation is, but exactly how the hand will play out is not clear.

Idea No. 40: When you’ve gotten tired and hungry, you’ll figure out a way to lose even if the game is good.

First off, this statement is beyond stupid if you read it literally. Figuring out a way to lose should be quite easy no matter what your state of tiredness or how hungry you might be.

But what I think is really going on here is that the advice implies when you get tired or hungry the quality of your playing decisions will deteriorate dramatically and even an expert player will now turn into a losing player. Well, if you don’t sleep for three straight days, I would agree with this. But it’s also my opinion that expert players still play quite well when they’re just somewhat tired or hungry.

For instance, suppose you’re an expert player and have been in your favorite poker room all day, are now tired, and have decided to go home. But on the way out you notice a terrific game in the corner of the room and there’s an open seat. If you’re serious about winning money, there’s no question it’s best to sit down. That’s because to play poorly it means that you now must be playing some hands differently from the way you would normally play them and this new way of playing must be inferior to your standard way. This just doesn’t happen because you’re a little bit tired.

Idea No. 41: To counteract tilt, which usually means you’re playing in a much more reckless manner, you should tighten up and relax.

This is the sort of advice that’s common in the poker psychology literature. But in my opinion, being on tilt usually means you have lost the ability to think rationally. If that is the case, doing things like playing tighter and relaxing, which are rational decisions, is not something that’s going to happen. The reason for this is that these changes require the ability to think rationally, which is not something a tilted player is capable of doing.

Idea No. 42: The amount of work it takes to become an expert poker player can be daunting.

This idea may be the most important one in this whole article (if not the whole series). My approach to poker has always been to learn those concepts which govern the strategy that you as a player will use. Some of these concepts will apply no matter the form of poker and some will be unique to the specific game that you’re playing. In addition, there will be times when it seems that certain concepts will lead in different directions, and thus the ability to balance these ideas becomes important.

Now learning all this stuff won’t happen overnight. To become a top notch player it will take time and effort, as well as experience to master the intricacies of poker, but the word “daunting” is still inaccurate.

More recently there has been another approach that has become popular in the poker literature. It’s the idea that you need to study situations and get as many of them down as possible. If this is your approach, expect to be overwhelmed with work and don’t expect to do that well as a poker player. You won’t learn all the things you need to know, and when it comes time to make a tricky decision, you won’t have concepts to balance to fall back on.